Albums

Album Review: Epicurean

Album: A Consequence Of Design
Label: Metal Blade

Epicurean are a band that defy anyone to make assumptions. If one were to look solely at their biography, it would be forgivable to assume that half a dozen guys from Minneapolis would simply be yet another alpha-male pseudo-hardcore crew intent on eschewing melody for machismo. Listening to the first minute of their re-issued debut, ‘A Consequence Of Design’, and you could be forgiven for thinking it was another in the long line of symphonic Euro-metal outfits. You’d be hasty, not to mention utterly wrong, on both counts.

‘A Consequence Of Design’, originally released in 2005 and re-mastered for the band’s new Metal Blade label, is nothing if not epic – only one of the 11 tracks clocks in at less than five minutes. That is not to say, however, that the pace ever lets up – the songs are crafted to be energetic, but not frantic. More important, though, is the sheer weight and bombast of the sound – ethereal keyboards melt around crashing drums and guitars that veer from chunky riffs to blistering, Iron Maiden-style solos, with vocals switching effortlessly from breathless shouting to clear, anthemic melody.

When they get the balance between the two right, Epicurean create marauding metal beasts of songs, balancing brutality and a keen ear for melodic parts that simply sweeps the listener along with it. ‘Anathema: The Gatekeeper’ is a fine example of this. It’s an epic 7-and-a-half-minute romp through chugging rhythm parts and growling vocals, into a soaring chorus and solo, and right back again. Unfortunately, with songs as uniformly long as Epicurean’s tend to be, they have a tendency to start to meander. The unabashed embrace of power metal-style vocals and gothic keyboards can also push the sound into the truly cheesy territory. This is what stops it short of being a great album. The examples of Epicurean at their best are interspersed with tracks such as ‘To Cast The Mourning Shadow’, which loses it’s way half-way through and attempts to redeem itself with a catchy chorus section far too late.

There is, on the whole, a lot to like about A Consequence of Design. It is an album that (with the exception of the staunchest black metal fans for whom anything short of professing pacts with Satan with every waking breath is anathema) most metal fans can find something to like about. It is a solid, if not outstanding, metal opus that embraces aspects of death, prog, power and even metalcore, goth and black metal, and can appeal equally to fans of bands as diverse as Iron Maiden, Dream Theater and Dimmu Borgir alike. Well worth investigating.

For fans of: All That Remains, Iron Maiden, Noumena
Band links = Epicurean

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